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If anyone has tips on how to build privacy-preserving social media without being marked a Nazi, a terrorist, a pedophile or a totally regular suicide I'm listening.

Edit: I'm totally serious, even Signal barely manages to exist, is blocked from federating for reasons of the preservation of the developers' personal safety and has publically been compared to the KKK by FBI officials. It's not a fun or bright situation but it is how things are right now.


Maybe start by not conflating privacy with concerns about censorship.

Then, it'd be great if privacy-focussed platforms would show a commitment to find privacy- and freedom-preserving ways to tackle the very real problem of these platforms overflowing with actual, self-marking Nazis.

As an analogy: if the cryptocurrency community can find ways to curb problems such as scams or the waste of energy with technology, it can avoid the regulation to that effect it so much fears. But every time some cryptobro opines that people really deserve to be scammed if they did not go through each single line of source code their bitcoin wallet depended on, the idea that these communities are sticking up for some larger values and not feeling quite ok with scammers and Nazis loses a bit more of its legitimacy.


It would really be great if privacy and anti-censorship advocates could solve the problem of extremism! Seems like a bit of a tall order, though.

What you're really proposing, IMO, is this:

Privacy and anti-censorship advocate (PA): I think we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater when we're trying to curb extremism by requiring messaging services to police their users. The problem is real, but the methods being used to address it are completely antithetical to the fundamental principles of free societies. I want to let people talk to each other on-line without anyone listening in on them or stopping them from saying whatever they want to say.

You: OK, you can do that if you can make sure no Nazis can use your service to further their agenda.

PA: That seems impossible, given the goals I've stated. Furthermore, this is precisely what I meant with "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

IOW, I don't think there's a technical solution to be found here. This is a fundamental ideological divide, and needs to be dealt with as such.


[flagged]


"Please try harder, you make Nazi's look reasonable in comparison" breaks the site guidelines badly. Please see my other reply to you at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21908329.


You're right, that's totally unnecessary. I'm sorry.

Not a great holiday season, solitude and painful realisations for Christmas. Delete or cut into my posts if that makes sense to you, I can't edit them anymore.

I'll go watch the Grinch and be quiet.


I'm sorry to hear that and hope that things get better soon. No need to delete or cut into anything.


Archive.org already has lending queues for ebooks!

I sincerely hope I haven't made you feel the way I felt when my gramdmother told me I had, in fact, not invented scrambled eggs.

IMO if buying ebooks were super easy many people would do it, I know Steam and the PS Store had that effect on me.


Years ago, Tim O'Reilly made the observation that time was really the limiting factor in how many books people read (or something along those lines). That's certainly the case with me. Spending (typically) $10 for a book that will take me 8 hours or more to read is a great value for my time--and that's not even counting libraries or out of copyright works--and I'm not sure how acquiring most books could be much easier than it is.

Books could be universally free and maybe I'd browse a bit more but I wouldn't really read more.


That may be specifically true for you and Tim O’Reilly (and even billions of other people) but it isn’t generally true


I think it depends on the situation. I read a lot more (for myself, not for classes) in college when I had access for free to all those books. The cost of books impedes humans. Luckily there are libraries all over, but they’re not nearly as extensive.


In my case, I have a fair bit of time for reading, and I read very quickly. I am forever waiting in a queue for ebooks via my library, and a lot of the books I'd like to read aren't available that way. If I were to buy all the books I read, I'd be broke.


I thought for sure you were the inventor of the scrabbled egg.


You expect them to spontaneously have a spiritual epiphany about your "old soul"?

Please man, stand up for yourself and learn the measures of business ethics.


You're jumping to conclusions. I often asked for raises and tried to negotiate. I quit companies several times after they failed to promote me or they failed to give me a raise. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with business skills. Just bad luck.

My last boss was so upset when I told him I was thinking of quitting that, in front of the whole company, he threatened to throw me out of the window but then he apologized multiple times and asked me to come back after he regained his composure (I had a lot of leverage at the time)... But I quit the next day to save face and find better opportunities. This company had tons of money (millions to spend on development) but they wouldn't give me a 10% modest salary increase after 2 years of excellent work. That's the kind of irrational people I worked for. There was no indication they were going to be like this when I joined. You only find out about this stuff after several years and then you already wasted your time and have to start again at a new company and hope that your next employer will be fair or rational at the very least.


Larger and older companies tend to have much more structured and consistently positive annual salary adjustments. You should try to find one of those before you turn 35.


You're taking my comment in bad faith.

I claim nowhere that you don't negotiate, I claim you do it badly and point to the area of knowledge that is required to change that.

It's bad pedagogy to even acknowledge you playing the victim card, that's your psychological issue and I'm not about to play therapist to a stranger.

Edit: thanks for the negativity I suppose, I'll make sure you profit from my advice in no shape or form as requested.


Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've done it quite a bit already, and it's the opposite of the spirit we're going for here, so we actually ban accounts that do it.

If you'd please read the site guidelines and follow them when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Seriously. Here's how the software business works: There are people in management with MBAs who follow the same template no matter what company you are talking about. Management sees everyone non-management as part of the infrastructure. Developers are not human beings to them, they are a commodity. A developer is the same thing as a printer or an office chair to them. To be in management, you have to also be "good" at dehumanizing others, drinking a lot, saying "yes" to anything regardless of how ridiculous that thing is, and generally going along to get along.

I have job-hopped many times hoping to find a place that values developers. After 9-10 jobs I now realize my mistake. There aren't any. Every place I have worked is more or less as I just described to you. This is 21st century business. This is what they didn't explain in college. This is what is wrong with all business in general is this commodification of people--they don't care if you're a good developer or a 10X problem solver, most are happy with cheap. If the labor comes from India or China or anyplace with a contract that puts the laboror in a one-down position of servitude, all the better because those people can be exploited much further. Again, they don't even care about quality, they desire only "good enough."

Now, there is something worse. White males are considered less attractive people to hire. They are trying to punish us for being intelligent and successful. If you don't believe me, just wait, in time you will experience it yourself.


It's also a psychological issue caused by bad parenting and disinformation in the media, which leads people to seek meaning in work, leading to various forms of codependency with their employers, which in turn cultivates learned helplessness.


It's eerie how accurately this describes folks I know who have gone through several cycles of excitement, codependency, and disillusionment. Finally, I no longer "seek" meaning in work -- the only meaning is that it is a "means" to an end, and the closer I get to finding the good enough solution, the more simple I make things for myself.


Does this work for unloading followed by summary execution?

It says it's useable for developing code for the CSME, does that take care of the whole thing or are there ROM areas left which cannot be worked around?


If you have the means to build libraries and universities there's a world of things you can hardly do worse.


Everything changes, yet nothing is new under the sun.


The upside I see is illegal online "libraries", which are free public printing presses.

It's a revolution that went quite unseen, thanks to the copyright lobby's persistent noise about copied videotapes and bootlegging.

May good health find their operaters, and may the next Library of Alexandria make it to the heat death of the universe.


I like this subset of the Hardest Problem: trusting other human beings to get enough things right.


Ironic for these to be the only grey letters in the comment section.

"A slippery slope; and so it all began..."


I suspect the grey text is due to the use of the "orange man = bad" phrasing, popular on /r/thedonald as a way to trivialize the argument of any critic of Trump.

Ironically, dismissing any criticism of Trump as simply this knee-jerk reaction, the people using this phrase quite often make the same mistake they are trying to accuse others of.


the other aspect that i just realized as I thought about this is that in evaluating Trump in grey thinking -- one may have him as light grey or dark grey...

but this depends merely on the prioritization of the factors that is assigned.

People who are benefited to an extent by Trump's impact/policies/actions have him at a light grey.

The next thing it leads to is a demonization of the group in light grey by the group in dark grey - instead of white and black.

why not the groups just agree to disagree and move on?


Gödels incompleteness theorem guarantees all abstractions are leaky.

Try explaining the intrinsic meaning of written language in written language. You can't close the loop without making the result trivial.


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